The Muharib

The Muharib were the ancient portal guards of the Mól empire. The Mól experimented with magics that broke the boundary between the material and the inner planes, and the work was dangerous: creatures spilled through into their world. The Muharib were elite warriors trained to beat back almost any kind of beast, equipped with the finest weapons the rarest minerals could make, and they safeguarded the empire.

In the end there was division among them. Many of the leaders grew tired of the task and had come to see themselves as little more than a janitorial crew cleaning up after the conjurers, so some of them revolted and split from the empire. They settled on a mountain top and built the keeps of Alqadim Al-Qasr.

Campaign Updates

They did not die out. The party was a long time arriving at that.

At first the order was only history. Councilman Torgun Kurvroc of Loshev claims descent from their Vala-mountain line, and traded on the claim hard enough that flattering it opened his purse; the curse-keeps the party has walked since are built on the same planar cosmology the Muharib were raised to police (S3E33, S3E38–E39). Their oath survives in Taal: by thy service and by thy loyalty, all paths open to thy sovereignty.

Then hobgoblin raiders sacked Loshev. They went through Kurvroc’s estate first, took what they said belonged to them, and fought the town guard to a standstill with wounds so precisely placed that almost nobody died, which was noticed, and was not mercy so much as control. They struck Yullen Gemsmith’s house too, injured him, and took particular gems and a set of stonecutting blueprints. Their leader questioned the smith Hinta at length about Yullen’s son Cleven, and went to the family home hoping to find him there. Then they turned south. What brought them into the region at all was a rumor about the Birdman (S5E57–E58).

It was Hinta who put the name to them. The Muharib are the living clan: the last Mól great clan still standing, removed from the empire before it fell, which is precisely how they outlasted it by seven centuries. They hunt monsters, clearing beasts from land they consider theirs; an adolescent is trained hard enough to survive an owl bear, and the best of them to fell one. Their silver and silver-lined weapons come out of the forges at Draazstone. Hinta trained at the same forge that made them. She has sparred one of them, and says she held her own, and then says he let her win. She knew him.

They take back Mól artifacts wherever they surface, and hand them to families whose lineage they can verify or carry them home. By their reckoning this is not theft. By Loshev’s it plainly is.

The party declined the council’s request to hunt them. The reasoning was practical rather than moral: kill or cage these ones and more will come, there are already enough enemies, and the curses and Beltran were the priority. Aldo has been turning over a rumor that Beltran holds a Muharib relic, seeded to pit the raiders against him and so control what they go after.